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Friday, April 15, 2011

It only takes a moment.

I wrote in an earlier post about 'hiding the pain". I realized I have not come clean about the pain here. I still do not understand, I mean I do in the sense of the 'why' of my pain but not the way, how, in the span of a second you can go from being fine to being almost completely disabled. Especially when the pain is 'only' in a part of my face.

One second I was brushing my hair. The next I was seized by a pain of such horrificness I could not move. The pain came like a bolt of lightning out of the sky. It tore through my left temple. It went almost as quickly as it came. Good at hiding my feelings, physical as well as emotional, I decided to ignore it. It decided I would not be allowed to do that. It came on again and again. Out of the blue, any touch, even the littlest of breeze and the pain attacked. In addition I had constant pain as well. It was only in the top 2/3rds of the left side of my face. Yet it almost completely disabled me.

I was no longer able to wash my face or hair on that side. The pain of the touch was too horrendous. My left eye was involved as well. Any use of it, to read, to look to the left or the right, up or down, or the normal unconscious movement ratcheted up the pain to another notch, one I thought it could never reach.

All of the narcotics they gave me rarely helped. The major benefit was when they made me feel logy and cloudy enough I was less aware of the pain, as well as almost everything else.

I have had procedures that added pain to areas of my face where there was none. Surgeries that paralyzed half my face, caused me to be unable to walk for a few months(I was like a newborn colt, my legs criss crossing and sometimes flailing), caused my neck to 'fall down', so much that it is now held up with 2 clamps and 12 pins, and brain implants that sometimes make me feel more like a robot than wholly human.

Why did I do all this? How could someone consent to so much? The paralysis and added pain were the result of malpractice so that does not really count. The other side effects were mostly known.

The reason was simple. I let the pain make my decisions for me. When you are in severe, unremitting, unreachable pain how can you not let them cut into your head? I used to think that only happened when you had something really wrong, like a brain tumor. Pain? For goodness sakes. Pain could never rise to the level I had it or, even worse, let me consent to repeated brain surgeries.

I will write in other posts more about the pain itself. I think this is enough for now. For you and for me.